Contract is awarded for continued testing at Westport Middle School

Wednesday

Dec 26, 2012 at 12:50 PM

By ROBERT BARBOZA

By ROBERT BARBOZA

Editor

WESTPORT — The Westport School Committee reviewed eight proposals for providing environmental monitoring services for the PCB contamination at Westport Middle School at its last meeting, voting to award the contract to Fuss & O'Neill EnviroScience LLC.

Superintendent Carlos Colley said the company, the current provider of PCB monitoring services, was the low bidder among the eight firms responding to the school system's Request for Proposals for extended monitoring services.

The $38,100 bid earned the Boston company the contract for continued monitoring of PCB levels in the school building through June 30, 2013.

The presence of polychlorinated biphenyls in building materials used at the school was discovered during testing related to a planned roof and window replacement project in 2011. Air quality tests showed that the PCBs were leaching into the air, and were present at concentrations deemed harmful to children under Environmental Protection Agency guidelines.

A full-scale project to remove PCBs found in window and door caulking, cement for roof tiles, and other parts of the building was undertaken that summer, forcing a delay of several days for the fall opening of classes.

Clean-up costs and follow-up monitoring and testing have totalled more than $3 million since the problem was discovered.

Dr. Colley reported to the School Committee at the start of December that the latest round of PCB testing for select materials in several locations at the Middle School turned up a couple of problem areas.

Tests in the guidance office "found the PCB level to be above the 300 (ppm) threshold. A couple of other rooms in the school have been found to be 250 ppm," he noted. Those rooms are not being used, he reported.

The testing firm was trying to identify possible sources of contamination there, Dr. Colley indicated in an article in the Dec. 7 issue of The Chronicle.

The PCB contamination could be in the internal windows, cement, or the ventilation system. The carpets were removed and replaced with tiles in two rooms to try to resolve the problem, the superintendent said.

"Once we find the source, then we have to decide whether to leave it in place by encapsulation, or to remediate it," Dr. Colley noted.

The superintendent reported Friday that Fuss & O'Neill had just started in on the next round of testing at the school.